A Queer History of Dallas: the Formation, Development, and Integration of Big D’s LGBT Community, 1965-2005
Abstract
Abstract
A Queer History of Dallas contributes to the historiography on LGBT communities by focusing
on a community for which very little history has been written. It shows how the organizations that
queer people in Dallas founded provided them with a sense of community. This organizational
history demonstrates that queer men and women in Dallas were adept at forming social, religious,
political and cultural organizations. In addition to being skilled at creating vital community-based
institutions, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) women and men proved effective at
modifying those organizations when it was necessary to do so. Since queer people in Dallas were
efficient at forming and maintaining community-based organizations, several of them endured for
decades. By 2005 these decades-long organizations included the Cathedral of Hope (CoH), Dallas
Gay and Lesbian Alliance (DGLA), and Turtle Creek Chorale (TCC). This dissertation not only
demonstrates how the organizations that LGBT people formed in Dallas brought together a
sizeable number of men and women linked by their group identity as queer people, but it also
shows how LGBT women and men carved out a geographic community for themselves in the
Dallas neighborhood of Oak Lawn. Queer men and women faced discrimination when they began
to move to the area in the early 1970s. Even though LGBT people experienced resistance to their
congregating in Oak Lawn, they continued to move to the neighborhood in large numbers. Since
so many queer people inhabited Oak Lawn, by 2000 its zip code contained the highest number of
same-sex households of any in the state of Texas. In addition, this project shows the important part
that religion played in Dallas’ queer community. Progressive ministers, both straight and gay,
played a vital role in helping form a visible LGBT community in Dallas. From the mid-1960s,
when four straight ministers joined the first gay social organization in Dallas called the Circle of
Friends (COF), to 2005 when the Reverend Dr. Jo Hudson was elected the first female pastor of
the CoH, religious leaders played a significant part in the life of Dallas’ queer community.